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18 pounds of cherries

Seattle has wonderful fruit in the summer. Central Washington hosts the Yakima Valley, a fruit growing region that not only provides most of the US with apples but also has plums, tomatoes, cherries, apricots, on and on and on.

Sean and I have been keeping a close eye on the price of cherries for several weeks. They have been slowly decreasing in cost. Well yesterday, we went into Safeway and they had Bing Cherries on sale for $.97 a pound. We bought almost 20 pounds of them. I have been fantasizing about canning some, or making some cherry pie filling to can, or just freezing cherries to have in the wintertime.

Just when we started thinking we were genius' at saving money and stocking up for times when cherries aren't cheap and time is harder to come by it started to fall apart. . .I am going to Portland Thursday. Today I am swimming with another pregnant friend and then going into work (I didn't actually make it to work) and it's crazy hot- so sitting around in our house pitting 18 pounds of cherries isn't anyone's idea of a dream When are these cherries going to get pitted.

But, with $20 on the line I woke up, created a cherry pitting station on the front porch and went at it. I started pitting with a straw (push the straw through the top). It worked okay for like a half a pound, but I knew it wouldn't last. So I put my ingenuity to work and discovered the perfect pitting tool- the flat side of a nail.

Voila- less than 2 hours of pitting and there are now several bags of pitted cherries in our freezer for pie, jam, smoothies, or just general yumminess.